Generate a week of Do Nows keyed to retrieval and this term's summative

Generate a week of Do Nows keyed to retrieval and this term's summative

Term 3 starts this week, and the first thing on the board every lesson from tomorrow is the Do Now. Most teachers write them on the walk to first period, drawing from whatever they taught last, which is exactly what retrieval practice research says is the least effective mix. Spaced retrieval (last week, last unit, last term) beats "what did we do yesterday" every time. The problem is not knowing that. The problem is finding the 30 minutes to plan a week of them at the start of the term when you have 40 other things landing at once. This prompt turns the 30 minutes into 30 seconds, once you feed it the context.

The prompt

You are a senior [SUBJECT] teacher in an Australian [PRIMARY / SECONDARY / TERTIARY] school. You have run Do Nows at the start of every lesson for years, and you have shifted from "warm-up" Do Nows (settle the class, get pens moving) to "retrieval" Do Nows (make the class recall content from the last week, last unit, or last term, because that is what strengthens long-term memory). You know the difference between a Do Now that fills the settle time and one that does actual cognitive work.

Today you are helping me plan a week of Do Nows. Five lessons, one Do Now per lesson, ready to put on the board. Each Do Now runs five minutes: two minutes for students to attempt, one minute for the answer reveal, two minutes for the correction or the teacher's short explanation of the misconception.

THE CONTEXT
- Year level: [YEAR LEVEL, e.g. Year 9]
- Subject and current unit: [e.g. Year 9 Maths, unit on linear equations, week 1 of 5]
- Curriculum frame: ACARA v9.0 [PASTE THE RELEVANT CONTENT DESCRIPTORS or the strand]
- State context (if it matters): [e.g. VCAA Levels 9-10, NSW Stage 5, QCAA]
- The prior unit (or last term's unit) students should still be able to recall from: [e.g. "Term 2 unit on solving one-step equations", or "last unit on algebraic notation"]
- One earlier unit worth reaching back to (last term or Year [X-1]) for spaced retrieval: [e.g. "Year 8 unit on integers and directed number", or "Term 1 unit on fractions and decimals"]
- The summative task this unit builds towards: [ONE LINE, e.g. "an in-class test in Week 5 covering solving linear equations with variables on both sides, worded problems, and verification by substitution"]
- Class composition in one line: [e.g. "26 students, mixed ability, three EAL/D at intermediate level, two on individual learning plans"]
- What can go on the board: [e.g. "whiteboard, no worksheet, no calculators for the Do Now"]
- Known misconceptions from this cohort or previous ones: [LIST TWO OR THREE, OR WRITE "I am not sure" and I will surface the well-documented ones]

PRODUCE FIVE SECTIONS, IN THIS EXACT ORDER. NO PADDING. NO FLATTERING PRE-AMBLE. START WITH SECTION 1.

SECTION 1. THE FIVE DO NOWS
One block per lesson, labelled Lesson 1 through Lesson 5. Each block contains:
(a) THE BOARD COPY. Exactly what goes on the board. Between two and four short questions or one worked-example prompt. Numbered. Ready to type into a slide or write on the whiteboard as-is. No teacher-facing wording ("students will..."); write the student-facing text.
(b) THE ANSWER KEY. One line per question. Include working where working is what you want students to see, not just the final answer.
(c) THE RETRIEVAL TARGET. One line: which prior content this Do Now is pulling from (e.g. "Term 2 one-step equations, plus one anchor from Year 8 integers").
(d) THE SUMMATIVE LINK. One line: how this specific retrieval feeds the summative task in Week 5 (e.g. "if students cannot solve one-step equations cold, worded problems in the summative will collapse at translation").

The spacing across the five lessons must be deliberate:
- Lesson 1: heaviest retrieval from the prior unit or last term. This is the diagnostic week; you want to know what has survived the holidays.
- Lessons 2 and 3: interleave prior unit content with the first content from the current unit.
- Lesson 4: reach back to the earlier unit named in the context (Year [X-1] or Term 1). This is the deep spacing move; it feels harder to students, and that is the point.
- Lesson 5: connect the current unit to the summative task. This is where the Do Now becomes a Do Now that also functions as a practice-under-conditions moment for one component of the summative.

Do NOT write five Do Nows that all pull from yesterday's lesson. That is a warm-up, not retrieval.

SECTION 2. THE SPACING LOGIC
A short table with five rows, one per lesson. Columns: Lesson, Retrieval Target, Spacing Interval (last lesson / last week / last unit / last term / prior year), Reason (one line: why this content, at this interval, this week).

The point of this section is to make the spacing choices visible, so a colleague or a head of department can see what you were doing and so you can copy the structure next week for the next block of five.

SECTION 3. THE MISCONCEPTION WATCH
For each of the five Do Nows, the single most likely wrong answer, and the one-line teacher move if you see it in the room.

Format: "Lesson [X], Question [Y]. Wrong answer: [WHAT]. Move: [ONE SENTENCE, e.g. "pull two students to the board, show the correct step, do not explain, then ask a third student to name the move"]."

If a Do Now has more than one high-frequency wrong answer, name up to two. Do not exhaustively list every possible error; that is not a teacher move, it is a marking rubric.

SECTION 4. THE COMPRESSION PLAN
Real weeks lose lessons. Assemblies, whole-school events, staff meetings that eat prep, a sick day. Give me one paragraph and one list:
(a) The paragraph: which two of the five Do Nows are load-bearing for the summative in Week 5. If the week compresses to three lessons, these are the three that survive, in this order.
(b) The list: what to fold up if the week compresses further. If it becomes two lessons, which one Do Now do I run, and what do I merge from the other four into it.

Do NOT tell me to just skip Do Nows if the week is short. The five minutes at the start of the lesson is the most efficient teaching move in the week; the last thing to cut is the Do Now.

SECTION 5. THE HONEST NOTES
Two to four short bullets I need to see before I put these on the board Monday morning.
- Any Do Now where the difficulty is likely mis-calibrated for the class composition I described, and how I would adjust it up or down.
- Any Do Now where the retrieval reaches back further than my class can realistically hold, and the fallback question I would swap in.
- Any Do Now that leans on content I might not have taught if I inherited the class or if my Term 2 sequence differed from the standard scheme of work.
- If I said "I am not sure" for the misconceptions in the context, the three you drew from the well-documented literature for this year level and topic, cited in one line.

RULES
- Australian English throughout. Year 9, not 9th grade. Term 3, not Q3. Australian spelling.
- No em-dashes and no en-dashes anywhere. Commas and full stops only.
- Board copy in Section 1 must be usable as-is. Do not write "consider putting the following on the board". Write the board copy.
- Questions must be solvable in the two-minute attempt window. If a question needs three minutes, it is not a Do Now, it is the lesson.
- Do not include multi-choice questions. Do Nows are open response, so the wrong answers are visible.
- Do not use the words "leverage", "unpack", "deep dive", "robust", "scaffold their thinking", "meet students where they are", or the phrase "at its core".
- Do not finish with "let me know if you want the next five". I will ask if I want that.

What it does well

Forces the model to hold spacing intervals across a week, which is the move most Do Nows skip. The four-part block for each lesson (board copy, answer key, retrieval target, summative link) is what turns "here are five questions" into a defensible weekly structure a colleague could pick up and use. Section 2's spacing table is the block that pays for the whole prompt, because it makes the retrieval strategy legible instead of implicit, and it means next week's five Do Nows can be structured by copying the pattern, not the questions. Section 3's misconception watch is the difference between a Do Now that diagnoses and one that just runs down the clock. And Section 4's compression plan catches the reality of the term: no week ever runs the way the plan reads, and the load-bearing two Do Nows are the ones you want to protect when the assembly lands on Thursday.

Where it falls over

The model will over-reach on the earlier unit retrieval in Lesson 4 if you give it a subject and year with a broad prior curriculum. If a Year 9 Maths Lesson 4 Do Now asks students to recall content from Year 7 that they may not have covered depending on the school, the retrieval fails and the class disengages. Section 5's fallback question line is where you catch that; do not skip Section 5. Second failure: for subjects where the summative task is not skill-based (e.g. a Year 10 English essay on a novel), the summative link in each lesson gets thin. If the summative is analytical writing, the Do Nows still need to build recall of textual evidence and conceptual moves, but the model can drift into "here are some questions about the book" rather than "here are questions about the specific analytical moves the summative will test". Push back and ask the model to align each Do Now to a specific analytical move the summative demands. Third failure: the misconception watch in Section 3 is generic if you wrote "I am not sure" in the context. It works, but not as well as if you name your class's actual misconceptions. The model is drawing from the literature; you are the one who knows what your Year 9s did wrong in the mock in Term 2. Add the specific misconception, run the prompt a second time, and the Section 3 output tightens visibly.

Try it like this

For a Year 9 Maths week 1 of linear equations, with a Week 5 test summative: paste the ACARA descriptor for solving equations, name Term 2's one-step equations unit and Year 8's integers unit as the prior content, and the five Do Nows will space from one-step (Lesson 1) into two-step (Lesson 2) into worded (Lesson 3) into integers-under-linear (Lesson 4) into a summative-format practice question (Lesson 5). That progression is a term of work built into one week's opening five minutes, five times.

For a Year 10 English unit on a novel with a Week 5 analytical response: name the analytical moves the summative will test (thesis in paragraph one, evidence unpacked in the following sentence, connection back to the question). Ask the model to build the five Do Nows around quotations and short paragraph starters that isolate each move. The board copy for Lesson 5 becomes a mini-thesis-and-evidence pair students draft in two minutes, exactly what they will do on the day of the summative.

For a Year 7 Science week 1 of a new unit on forces: the earlier unit for spaced retrieval is often the Year 6 primary science on motion, if your feeder schools taught it, or Term 1 measurement and graphs if they did not. Ask the model to build Lesson 4 around Term 1's measurement content, framed as a forces context. The retrieval is spacing, the framing is transfer, and the class does both moves in five minutes.

For a Year 12 VCE class in the final term before the exam: the summative in Section 1 (d) is the exam itself. The Do Nows should look like exam-cued retrieval (past-paper style items, one per lesson, chosen so that by the end of the week the class has retrieved across five key knowledge dot points). Section 5's honest notes will tell you which dot points you should not have needed to retrieve this late, and that is useful information for the run-up.

For a primary Year 4 class where five Do Nows a week feels heavy: run the prompt for three, not five. Ask the model to space the three across the week (Monday retrieval from last week, Wednesday retrieval from last unit, Friday retrieval that previews the summative). Everything else in the structure holds; the compression plan in Section 4 becomes the answer for the other two days.

If you only have ten minutes on Sunday evening: run Sections 1 and 4 only. The five Do Nows and the compression plan. Section 2 and 3 you can generate later in five minutes off the finished Section 1, and Section 5 is the sanity pass you can run in the car on the way to work if you have to.

The Do Now is the five minutes of the lesson you have the most control over. Five minutes, five times a week, forty weeks a year is a hundred hours of retrieval practice, if you plan it. A hundred hours of settle time, if you do not.